


James Potter is scared of spiders

by expelliarmustard



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Christmas, Comfort, Drunken Confessions, Established Sirius Black/Remus Lupin, F/M, Feels, First Kiss, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Hogsmeade, Hogwarts, Hogwarts Seventh Year, Holidays, Humor, Love, Marauders, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Marauders Friendship (Harry Potter), Mutual Pining, Pining, Remus Lupin & James Potter Friendship, The Great Lake | The Black Lake (Harry Potter), Winter, Young James Potter, jily
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 07:07:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29274450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/expelliarmustard/pseuds/expelliarmustard
Summary: Out of the Three Broomsticks on a cold December night in 1978, walked a group of friends. It’s the last few days of Christmas break in their 7th year, and some have their feelings sorted out, while others… haven’t, um, talked yet. But this night, drunk and happy, something slips from Lily’s mouth.Oneshot.:)
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	James Potter is scared of spiders

James was tipsy; not drunk, but not-not drunk. Sober enough to provide sturdy arms for both the considerably drunken hands of Sirius’ and another pair of Lily’s to cling to as they scuffed their shoes though the darkening cobblestone streets of Hogsmeade, their giggles and laughter small and chirpy in the December night. The three walked alone down the middle of the street through the distant sound of chattering and Christmas music that weakly floated in the atmosphere, and lights shutting of from closing stores.  
James tipped his head back and grinned to himself at the familiar hum of Hogsmeade closing down for the night, peace settling in his veins despite the growing strain on his biceps and now shoulders as he practically heaved the two forward. Or at least in the general direction, because despite their state he was pretty sure Lily was trying to teach Sirius hopscotch. And of all times, right now was one Sirius was actually avid to learn something. Very quickly they both collapsed into another fit of giggles, pulling harder on James, who drew the line.  
“Dammit Remus, where are you…” he muttered to himself, trying to order his scrambled thoughts. He halted in the street to crane his neck to see where he had got to.  
“Ooo someones in trouble!” Sirius trilled chaotically.  
“He’s your boyfriend, where is he?” James said to Sirius, who merely gave a half-arsed shrug and leaned forward to grin for no reason at a bright-eyed Lily on the other side of James, who returned a mischievous beam. James rolled his eyes at both of them and returned to trying to sift through the mist clouding his brain until it struck him like lightning in slow motion.  
They had walked off without Remus; literally left him at the till as he was paying. He cursed himself.  
“We’re turning around guys,” he ordered, furrowing his brows,  
“One, two, three and turn!”.  
The two blinked at him blankly, still as boulders, until they and James quickly after buckled into wheezes of ditzy, jovial laughter.  
Maybe he should have tried again, but everything felt light and warm and safe, and selfishly, James didn’t want to shrug off the moment just yet. Until that was, he heard a familiar voice angrily holler his name from behind, where James nearly wept in relief at the thundering of Remus’ heavy boots on the concrete behind them.  
“Thank god for you Remy, my beautiful hero”, James said, trying to look apologetic as Sirius, (who was ecstatic to see him despite his disregard a moment before), was transferred to Remus’ arm.  
He pleaded a weak apology, earning himself a half-hearted glare from Remus’ eyes that he was sure were masking at least a little amusement. As Remus and Sirius stepped into the lead towards the path that led back to Hogwarts, James vowed to himself that he would properly apologise when he was less… woozy…  
“Stay away he’s mine” Sirius quipped as he clung to Remus.  
The latter smirked, and as he shifted Sirius closer and looped his arm around his back, he voiced ahead of himself,  
“We shoulda left when Pete and Marlene and them did, it’s getting kinda dark”.  
At James’ side, Lily spoke up,  
“But then we would have missed all the dancing!”.  
In emphasis, she stepped to the side and held up James' hand to twirl herself, predictably staggering back into James, laughing giddily. His attempt to ignore the heat faintly flaring up his neck was weak, pathetic and ludicrous. Likely because he didn’t really want to keep trying to constantly ignore these feelings. He had finally secured this long-fought friendship with Lily, but trying to ignore the yearning feeling of wanting more, to be more, was chipping away at him, flake by flake.  
He would have pulled her back closer to him and continued walking if she had not demanded he twirl as well. Laughing, and melting a little under her earnest, undivided attention, he raised her own hand and swivelled underneath it, then ended with a flourishing bow and a pompous grin. Remus had turned his head again to watch them with a look of exasperation.  
James said loudly to Lily as he linked his arm into hers,  
“Don’t forget Sirius going up and challenging all those innocent strangers to a dance battle”  
She glanced at him with a smile from the memory, and pulled herself closer, resting her free hand on top of James’ forearm.  
Despite himself, James’ couldn’t rip his gaze off her as she turned to look at Sirius ahead of them.  
He had immediately twisted around in defence;  
“I challenged, and I won!”  
There was mischief dancing in her eyes.  
“Only because they didn’t dance back!” she retorted, sticking her tongue out at him with a grin. 

They bickered idly as they walked up the steepening path, the forest thickening and the sallow light from the crescent moon becoming less and less the further they walked. Dark skeletons of trees towered over them on either side, their tangled branches stretching across to form a tunnel. James stopped to reach into his robe for his wand as Sirius and Remus walked around a bend ahead of them, the arguing from Sirius and Lily having trailed off into a pacified silence.  
“Lumos!” he said, before pushing his glasses up his nose slightly and glancing at Lily who was watching him. His eyes flicked from hers to the top of her head where his breath hitched.  
“GAH!”  
“What??”  
“Nope Lily don’t move, just hold on a sec,”  
“What is it?”  
“There’s just - just a thing on you, hold on!”  
Frantically, he ferreted around for a stick or a branch or a something, anything, to flick away the horrid, juicy spider beginning to intertwist in her hair. Lily reached up and patted around her head. She felt it, grabbed it, and threw it on the ground.  
“Eurgh!!” her face scrunched in disgust.  
Frozen in his panic, having just found a massive stick and was holding it up like a baseball bat, he gaped at her, at the spider, and then back at her.  
She shivered and wiped her hands on her jeans as she glared at it as its fat body and spindly legs crawled into the brush, away from the light from James’ dropped wand.  
Realising he was still poised with a stick so large it’s basically a branch above his head, he coughed and tried to wipe off his gobsmacked expression. She turned to him, hair flaring out, and he dropped his arms and the stick in defeat.  
“James Potter is scared of spiders?” She was grinning as if she had just discovered a bucket of gold.  
“Okay? Why the fuck aren’t you?”  
Lily laughed lightly and walked over to retrieve the wand James had dropped. He barely got to her in time when she started to sway, clearly unbalanced, clearly still drunk.  
As he straightened her, and absent-mindedly brushed leaves that weren't there from her shoulders, he got caught in her gaze. James was the one to break eye contact.  
“Let’s get you home,” He said distractedly after picking up his wand, vaguely wondering how he had lost Remus yet again.  
“We’re going to Hogwarts you numpty,” She tipped her head back to gaze at the braided branches above.  
“Ah, same thing though isn’t it. Let’s get you home.” He linked with her arm once again.  
“I am.”  
James glanced at her with a raised eyebrow. Slivers of moonlight were glinting through the gaps of the trees, catching on the surface of Lily’s face like it was their final destination.  
Quietly, he asked,  
“What?”  
She spoke the words thoughtfully, softly - but also like she thought it was obvious.  
“I am with you.”  
He stared at her, right at her, and into the surrounding silence, against his will, he laughed. Except it wasn’t at all funny. He did so either to distract her or distract himself from his tingling fingertips and his organs that were twisting and wrapping around each other at what she just said. She looked away, expression unchanged and uninterested in James’ lack of response as if what she said was just as factual as everything else. A chilly breeze filtered through the forest, hushed and watching, but goosebumps already spotted his arms.  
She was drunk, likely not going to remember this night, so he didn’t want to take it to heart - it was obviously just her spilling all the scrambled, woozy, senseless thoughts that were bouncing off the walls in her brain. Yet, that didn’t stop the warmth, the rush of adoration and this thrilling feeling of being alive that ebbed through his veins.  
Yes for a second, he felt complete; like something had slotted right into place. But then a feeling of vast emptiness cracked open inside him, with a new expanse of him waiting to be fulfilled.  
So he could only stare and laugh.  
At this moment his life was an oil painting, but he snapped back into reality as quickly as Remus had come striding round the bend after realising they were gone, frustrated and tired. At his demand, James picked up the pace, the rest of the walk back to Hogwarts turned into a blur.  
He himself was still too drunk to properly think about it, so he just looked to the clouds dusting the rooftops of the castle now in view, and smiled.

~

With the willowy streak of sunlight peeking around the corner of the window in their dorm, James awoke with a headache. He wasn’t hungover, not from alcohol. Can you get hungover from girls telling you that you are their home? Heartbreak hangovers were proven true a long time ago though, thanks to the ‘study’ done by Peter and his girlfriend of 9 months, and their consequential breakup that left him bedridden. They seem like they could be similar, so maybe that’s what it was.  
He groaned at the burning behind his eyes from the brightness, stuffing his head into the front of his pillow. But it was Sunday, and it was sunny, so he will pick himself, his quidditch robes and broom up, and drag them out to the pitch.  
After detangling himself from his covers and dragging himself across the room to the bathroom, stopping for a moment to smack a waking Sirius with a lone pillow, he was feeling better already. 

It was quite literally a stabiliser, having to cling onto the broom and fly against the blistering wind, so by the time he walked into the great hall in the late morning to all his friends, he had composed himself, regained his energy, and was ready for anything.  
Except possibly for Lily, who had sat down next to him, to nudge her thigh against his and not move away like it was an accident.  
He raised an eyebrow at her.  
She raised one right back like she wasn’t doing anything at all and he was the abnormal one. Shaking his head, trying to flatten his grin, he returned to his porridge. Though their thighs remained in contact, both of their attention was turned to in front of them, as Sirius who had trudged into the hall looking unnaturally dishevelled, plonked himself down at the table with his fingertips pressing against his temples.  
“Looking fabulous today Padfoot, as always,” James said, lifting another spoon of porridge to his mouth as a yawning Sirius flipped him off.  
He then opened his squinted eyes and looked very seriously at Lily, vaguely flourishing his hands like he was trying to recall something he wanted to say. She looked at him, a smile threatening to break out.  
“Let me guess... this is about hopscotch?” she asked  
He clicked his fingers, eyes widening at the name.  
“Yes! I can’t do it anymore! I can’t remember the order of hops and then two-foot stomps, like does it go -”  
As James caught Lily’s eye, they both collapsed into giggles. Sirius stopped in his words and stared at them exasperatedly, apparently still awaiting an answer. 

James’ day continued untroubled and relatively pleasantly, the most part of it spent in front of the fire in the common room, playing idle games and shuffling through various assignments and papers, realising there’s a lot more to be done than he originally thought.  
By the time the flames that lapped at the fireplace had retreated into the logs, it was just Remus, Lily and him.  
Despite James having thrown his homework aside many moments ago, the other two were bent over some arithmancy papers, utterly absorbed in numerals and dull articles. For the first time since last night, he allows himself to properly look at her.  
To look at the marigold glow from the fire on her face.  
To look at the way strands of her hair had fallen free of her braid.  
To look at the way her eyes flicked from word to word over the paper.  
To freak out when she looks up at him, surprised to catch his eye.  
“You alright?”  
As she spoke, everything inside him swelled and he wanted to punch himself.  
He rubbed his face with his hands and mumbled,  
“Yeah, of course, just tired”  
Lily pulled up her sleeve to look at her watch as James returned his attention to the fireplace.  
“With good reason. It’s 2am.”  
Remus, who was watching them, leaned back and sighed, before gesturing and saying  
“Is it alright if I take all the potions notes for now? I’ll make copies.”  
“Not with your handwriting,” Lily scoffed  
“Why do you need them now? Are you gonna cuddle them in your sleep?” James asked.  
“I would never do that to Sirius,” he said solemnly.  
Laughing, they packed up. Lily had gone up to her dorm, and James and Remus started trudging up the stairs to theirs. Right before their doorway, Remus stopped and leant against it, looking at James oddly.  
He raised his eyebrows at him.  
“I’ve got the notes if you… need? What is it?”  
“It’s really hurting you huh?”  
“No… it’s just paper I’m carrying, it’s quite light...”  
He smiled faintly, seeing right through him, before speaking again.  
“Not to play matchmaker like you seem to think you are, but... I think you’re finally getting there, mate.”  
Giving in, but not knowing if he wanted to hear the answer, James asked,  
“She’s said something to you?”  
Remus looked down the hall.  
“I’m not saying anything James… but talk to her…”  
He really didn’t want to, but James lost his grip, and he felt it all tip over the waterfall. As he stood the dim hallway, grasping unorganized notes and biting his lip to stop himself from feeling totally pathetic, his carefree shell crumbled away from his body.  
“But what if she doesn’t feel the same?”  
Every word just made him feel more stupid, but more tumbled out before Remus had time to answer.  
“What if - what if I ruin everything we have now?”  
He looked at Remus desperately, having forgotten that he wasn’t supposed to care about her so much, that he wasn’t supposed to love her this much.  
Remus stepped closer so he was looking him directly in the eyes, and that sturdiness alone stabilised James.  
“I know. I really do. Sirius and I - when we first… It’s the same… You have one more step to take. You can’t be stuck on this forever, and what’s on the line isn’t as important as what will most likely be when you take that step,”  
He added after James’ blank expression,  
“Which is you and her...”  
James looked at the ground as he dug the edge of his shoe into the floor.  
“If there’s a time, it’s now. If you don’t and by chance, she doesn’t, it’s not gonna happen and you’ll just be stuck like this.” he gestured at James  
With a pounding heart, he looked back up, torn between the desire to laugh, to cry, and to hug him. What he said clanged and echoed against the walls of his mind, and continued to do so as Remus gave him a very purposeful look that sealed his words, before he opened the door and they entered their dormitory.  
James walked over to his bed and dumped the papers, having resolved both everything and nothing; he now knew the options, he just didn’t know if he could do the one he wanted to choose. 

~

“Geddup”  
“Hmm?”  
“Up, James”  
“No”  
“Yes come on, we’re going to Hogsmeade,” Sirius said, yanking the curtains of his bed open and letting the sunlight spill in like liquid over his sheets.  
“My bed’s better”  
“Better than Zonkos?”  
He hesitated at that, but he had barely been able to get to sleep last night, thoughts after thoughts tumbling inside his brain like a washing machine, so a sleep-in had a higher value than normal.  
“Yes. Just go I’ll see you later,”  
Sirius frowned and leant forward mimicking a fussy mother, trying to reach down to press his hand against James’ forehead.  
“Jamesie feeling alright?” He said, laughing as James swatted his hand away and tried to bury himself deeper.  
“Must be bad,” remarked Remus, who had appeared leaning against the bedpost.  
From the other side of the room, rummaging through masses of clothes, Peter called,  
“Okay fess up, who took my beanie?”  
Remus quickly snatched the navy beanie off his head and held it behind his back, trying to look casual and Sirius stepped away from the bed and in front of him.  
“No one Wormtail, you’ve probably lost it again” Sirius supposed.  
“Whatever...” Peter gave up as the other two walked over towards the door, not seeing Remus artfully toss the beanie into the pile of clothes for him to discover later.  
“We’ll see you later then,” Remus said, turning around to look at James, who nodded. Sirius blew him a kiss, James caught it then threw it on the ground, and then they were gone. 

Trying to go back to sleep would be useless now, but he still didn’t feel like Hogsmeade. A feeling of resignation sunk into him as he spotted the papers splayed on the floor by his bed that he left there last night. Well if he wasn’t going to sleep, what better to do than write about potion techniques?  
Dressed, cleaned, and having finished eating a rouge apple he assumed the others had brought up from breakfast, he gathered the papers and made his way down to the library. The sun shone through every window in every corridor, brightening his mood as he walked and enjoyed the sound of the heels of his shoes on the stone.  
As James rounded a corner and arrived at the entrance of the library, he noticed there to be more students than normal. Of course, today is the last day of Christmas break; everyone came back on the train yesterday. He scanned the room, looking for somewhere with enough space to spread all these papers, eyes coming to rest on a table next to a vast window with a familiar face sitting at it.  
She looked up as he walked over, and shot him a grin, the sunbeams setting her dark red hair alight with colour.  
“Whatever are you doing with all those papers? No… it can’t be…” Lily said as he sat down opposite her, plonking him potions work on the table.  
“Yep… I believe I am going to….” He paused and exhaled dramatically.  
“study…” he finished  
“Instead of Hogsmead?”  
”Instead of Hogsmead.”  
“And your name is what again?”  
He rolled his eyes.  
“I’m only kidding. Not really.” She added.  
He decided to flip the conversation onto her.  
“Why aren’t you with them all? I’m assuming Marlene and the others went too as they aren’t here?”  
She looked back to her notes and made a show of shuffling a few papers.  
“Um, well I have a lot of work to do,” she sat back and sighed at the spread in front of her.  
“And also they said you weren’t going,” she sat forward again and picked up her quill, hand poised over some parchment, but didn’t write anything.  
“So I figured like you would be up pretty soon anyway and I dunno... would you have wanted to be alone?” She doodled a flower in the corner.  
He raised his eyebrows, shifting his focus from her to flicking through his own papers.  
“Nah, clearly, otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here.”  
She bit her lip, still trying to look distracted.  
“I’m very good at sneaking, you know. If I didn’t want to sit next to you I would have gone to a different table, you wouldn’t even know.” He said to her.  
Glancing at him, she laughed and shuffled her seat in to see what he was working on. 

They stayed in that corner of the library, exchanging ideas and helping each other for a good hour and a half until it was late morning. James’ hand ached as he finished the last line of the dreaded practise essay, satisfaction seeping into his bones as he slouched back. Lily had finished too, just moments ago, and clapped slowly as he raised his arms in accomplishment. He offered his hand for a high five, and with an uneven smile, she met her hand with his.  
“Walk?” She proposed.  
He nodded, grateful for a reason to leave the library. They packed up all the papers into Lily’s bag which had a spectacular amount of room, and a few minutes later they ambled shoulder to shoulder across the grounds and towards the Black Lake.  
The day was brisk but sunny and the sky a rich, unblemished blue, with no wind to whip at their faces and turn the chill icier. As James and Lily came to a stop, meters from the water's edge and right next to a tree, a lazy splash came from the water about 10 meters away and followed a small flash of an orange tentacle above the surface. It was gone as quickly as it came, the dark water rippling weakly from where it had emerged. They smiled at each other and sat down to lean against the trunk of the tree to look out at the lake.  
“I wonder if that squid has a name…” Lily said, crossing her legs.  
“Right? Because someone had to like pick it up from the ocean and plonk it here. That’s enough of a connection for it to warrant a name, it’s basically a school pet.” James said.  
“True, actually..” Lily plucked a daisy from the grass and twirled it in her fingers. “it’s probably like... Squidster.”,  
“Or Squidlington” He provided.  
“Maybe Squidsicle”  
“Squiddy Boi”  
“Oh! Scrumsquiddlyumptious!”  
At that, they subsided into laughter that was loud and bright and floated through the empty air with ease. It was a perfect name for such a defined beast.  
“That will do nicely!” James laughed as he composed himself, running his hands through his hair and shifting into a more comfortable position, his shoulder just touching hers.  
Lily’s laughter trailed away into a contented sigh. She looked to James, then placed the flower she was holding atop his head which he shook it off like a dog.  
Lily huffed “Aw no, daisies suit you.”  
“Maybe if you make them into a crown”  
“Yes sir” she started plucking them from all around where they sat.  
As she started threading them, they fell into a peaceful silence.  
In just under 6 months or so, they would be chucked out into the real world, and a real war. It was too easy to get caught up in assignments, exams, and all else trivial in their lives, and forget their futures, the bigger things. But sitting here, in a rare, untroubled fracture of time in their lives, where nothing is pressing down on them, both their minds wander towards their greater worries. 

So James wasn’t utterly taken by surprise when Lily pulled away from delicately placing the flower crown on his head, sat back where her head lolled against the trunk of the tree, and asked him,  
“Hey, I don’t know how I don’t know this already, but what are you planning on once school ends?”  
He paused. And then his answer came easily and certainly.  
“Fight.”  
He looked at her.  
“I’m gonna stand up and fight for change. If I can, save some. But if not, at least they won’t be alone.”  
She watched him, then turned her head to the lake again with a slight furrow in her eyebrows.  
“I don’t want anyone to be alone.” He said, quieter than before.  
When she didn’t reply, he asked her the same question.  
Her answer, too, seemed to come easily.  
“I’ll be standing next to you. Fighting.”  
James nodded like that didn’t knock the wind out of him.  
Thoughts started to come to him without him wanting them too. This is the moment Remus had been pushing him about. He had limited time and unlimited words. It was going to come out anyway. His heartbeat pulsed in his ears.  
A slight shake took hold of his breathing.  
“If I lost you,” he squinted at the glimmering lake, surprised at how steady he felt,  
“I think I would lose it. Lose hope, the hope we’ve been clinging onto, learning to like cling onto.” He could feel her eyes take him in. See that he was serious. He heard her lightly exhale.  
“I- I find this feeling with you... Don’t be a little bitch and laugh, but you’re like, there for me? Home to me?”  
He looked at her with a soft smile. She saw this and her shoulders slackened slightly.  
But then he smirked.  
“You know… that’s not the first time you’ve said something like that to me.”  
Honestly, he was expecting a blush, or a fluster, denial or even confusion.  
So she rendered him momentarily speechless when without hesitation she turned it onto him and said,  
“From what I remember… I flustered you.”  
Quickly, he found his tongue.  
“Did not! You were drunk you’re memory’s hazy”  
But she pressed on, relishing in recounting the other embarrassing moments of that night she was supposed to forget.  
“Aaaand for a bonus, you’re afraid of spiders” She drawled, laughing  
James shook his head disbelievingly.  
“Okay excuse me you were supposed to be wasted”  
“Yeah, but my memory has never been bad, even when I’m drunk like that for some reason,” Lily said, her face shifting into a look of consideration.  
“Learn something new every day huh,” he said, reaching up to ensure his flower crown was still in place.  
“Everyday…” She repeated distractedly.  
“You know today's fact?”  
“Do tell..” he prompted, a little curious.  
“Sirius is a bad dancer”  
He couldn’t contain his laugh. “Only just learnt that? Seriously? Don’t tell him that, dunno what he’ll do but you won’t be able to come back from it…”  
“Pfft, I can hold my own, whatever he tries.”  
“That was like 2 days ago anyway.”  
“Too clever” she smirked, and something made him wonder if she wanted him to call her out.  
“So…” he peered at her.  
“Today's fact…” she said slowly  
Suddenly a cluster of butterflies erupted inside him. He squashed them down, scrambling to stay neutral. Suddenly, for an unknown reason, this seemed dangerous.  
“Is…?” he pushed, mimicking her slow manner.  
“That…’ Lily definitely looked at his lips. His insides froze with anticipation, as he looked into her eyes. Lily looked tentative now, the flirty demeanour faded slightly as the words seemed to die in her mouth. And then he just dove in, barely testing the water, as the icy freshness engulfed him. All or nothing.  
Neither tore their eyes away as he said: “You want me to kiss you?”  
Half of him was joking, and the other half was watching her every movement right down to the flutter of her eyelashes, the emerald of her iris, the twitch of her fingers. His heart was readying to leap out of his throat.  
He moved so he was just inches away, his body angled to face her. As something flashed in her eyes and her lips parted ever so slightly against her growing smile, he found it deep inside of him to push forward. Today or never. It’s today or never.  
“Because you know,” he started conversationally  
“I’ve always been open to the idea, really it comes down to-” He fell short when she smirked the most endearing, snarky, fed up, mischievous, amused, brilliant grin he’d ever seen. James nearly shattered.  
“Oh,” Lily rolled her eyes. “Do shut up”  
And she crashed her lips into his.  
Right now, if suddenly the chance appeared in front of his face, James truly felt as though he could fly. He lost himself, utterly lost himself in enchanted warmth as she threaded her fingers through his hair and they shifted so close together their legs started to tangle. The only thought that broke through the bliss flooding his mind was the wandering feeling that he felt as though he had broken some surface, and finally got a gulp of fresh air.  
There was nothing missing.  
It was fervent. It was daring. It was private, and it was whole. As he kissed her back, as he felt her smile against his, every dark and crushing worry that staked out in the corners of his mind burst into brightness. Everywhere she touched him a spark of electricity tingled on the surface of his skin.  
It was then, when they broke apart, and she pressed her forehead against his, his hand secured around her side as they sat beneath the tree, that he knew he would never meet anyone as extraordinary as Lily Evans.  
Her hands slid down from the back of his head, to touch his cheek and came to rest on his shoulders, and when she pulled back and smiled her perfect smile, James felt it all again a million times over. Gently, he took her hands in his. They were almost face to face, having twisted from sitting side by side to nearly opposite each other.  
She squinted her eyes and shook her head excitedly and girlishly with a laugh.  
“Wow...” She said, mostly to herself, when she opened her eyes again.  
He couldn’t help himself, so he said,  
“Should do it again sometime.”  
Lily breathed out ever so slightly.  
“Unbelievable” she closed her hands around his fingers tighter.  
Before he could say another word, she let go, her hands rising again to his cheeks, leant in, and for the second time, she kissed him.  
There was simply nothing to be said; he would die for her.


End file.
